It’s becoming an increasingly hostile environment for the Internet in India. The recent IT amendments seek to muzzle bloggersand getting a legal notice is always scary even if we’re damn sure we’ve done nothing wrong. The ridiculous rules state that any content that “annoys” people or “inconveniences” someone must be taken down within 36 hours if a mere complaint is received. How many of us can state with conviction that we will stand up to a fake or erroneous takedown notice?
To an extent, this is our fault. When the IT amendments were rushed through parliament, we didn’t take notice en masse. Or if we did, we chose to keep quiet about it. The government is cowardly. If there’s a huge protest (even online), it stops whatever it’s doing. Now that the law is passed, getting it repealed is a herculean task. If only we had nipped the problem in the bud. We had the power to create a ruckus – few other groups in the country enjoy so much readership and trust as bloggers. Traditional news media is viewed as biased. A blogger’s job on the other hand is to give opinions. We failed miserably here to protect the very freedoms we all rely on to exist in the first place!
But that’s over and done with. To an extent following certain well publicized cases in the media, the proposal was debated in the Rajya Sabha and Sibal and Co. admitted that the provisions could easily be abused and proposed to set up a committee to look into it (oooh, the anticipation!). That’s the last we’ll ever hear of that.
In India, very often the legal process is itself a punishment. Even if you win out in the end, you have been harassed and made to suffer mental torment. And what does it take for someone to inflict this on a blogger? Merely a complaint that what they wrote “annoys” them! No wonder then that in an experiment, a certain organization sent seven websites a takedown notice for its own content and it was promptly removed even though there was nothing wrong with any of the material. This is the reality that we’ve ended up enabling through our hubris.
So how many of you have been threatened with legal action unless you took down something from your blog? It could even be an implicit threat – “Take this down…or else”. And how did you deal with it? Most of us don’t have the time, resources, expertise, or inclination to fight someone in court so simply taking it down is the easiest and most practical option. Maybe we should have a system where if someone demands that a blogger take something down, lots of others reblog it immediately and so the person has to then send individual requests to each extra person who has reblogged the content.
I feel this is the only strength we have – numbers. Everyone can’t be silenced at the same time, can they? It might even act as a deterrent if the person demanding the takedown knew that the content would then be immediately spread to a dozens of other blogs! It’s the Streisand effect on steroids and will teach people that the Internet won’t be censored.
You will have nothing to fear in the government that FTI members will run. So instead of wasting time in fighting the criminals that rule India, please join or support FTI.
The longer you take to understand this, the more the pain and suffering you are destined to undergo.
s
I agree. Reblogging is a good option. “It’s the Streisand effect on steroids and will teach people that the Internet won’t be censored.”
But this really is getting so ridiculous.
This is another reason why centralized, corporate-controlled social networks are dangerous (e.g. Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc.). They provide a single point of contact for governments to issue takedown notices.
There is a movement currently to create “federated” social networks, which are community operated and decentralized. Under a federated video-sharing system (for example), the videos would exist on servers throughout the federation. There would be no central command center for a government to contact and issue a takedown. It’s not a 100% safeguard (governments could still pursue every node of the network), but it certainly makes takedowns much harder.
One such “federated” project that I’m following is called Media Goblin. You can learn about it here: http://mediagoblin.org/
In reply to wr
One problem with federated networks like Diaspora is that it costs money to own and host servers, as well as technical skills. We don’t know how well such systems will scale in the real world. Facebook for example processes almost 200 petabytes of data each year! That needs some serious resources.
Another problem is network effects – huge marketing is required to get people to shift themselves and their friends/family/posts etc. Established companies like Google don’t have it easy to get people to make the shift, so imagine how hard it will be for a startup…
Immediate reblog enmasse, yes that’s something I think we should do.